Welcome to a blog I’d like to read

I started this blog circa June 2018 primarily because I wanted to get better at writing and marketing myself and my business. By then, I had written about 7 paid articles since January for clients via the agency HitSubscribe.

Those 7 paid articles provided the sufficient evidence that I am not that bad at writing. After all, how bad can I be if I actually get paid multiple times to write? So I started this blog.

My no good, terrible, v1.0 of a writing plan

A blog needs a proper focus! I cannot just write anything I want. What theme or topic do I write this blog around? I probably shouldn’t start writing until I decide on a topic. Or should I?

Every topic seems too restrictive as I have the intellectual curiosity on par with the roving eyes of a philanderer. Eventually, I settled on a compromise. I chose to write around a single theme (I called it “patterns of breakthroughs” which was incredibly pretentious on hindsight) while allowing me the freedom of writing about any field so long it fits the theme. In other words, I have the best of both worlds — an identity for the blog while having complete freedom in topic selection.

For 6 months, that didn’t work at all. And I felt like a fraud. Breakthroughs? Give me a break. Worst of all, every article gave me an extremely strong feeling that I was trying to write instead of actually just letting the words fall out on their own.

And then this happens

By chance, in December 2018, I revisited Peter Attia’s blog which I am a member of. He has this page with the exact title I am ripping completely here. In it, Peter described a similar dilemma about what topic to base his blog on.

His head analyst then recommended him to simply write a blog he likes to read and let his readers auto-select themselves. In his own words,

Don’t worry about trying to figure out what everyone wants to read, write the blog I would want to read and let like-minded people find it.

So, this is the reboot. Like the title I copied shamelessly from Peter Attia, I’m also shamelessly copying that strategy. I’m just going to write the blog I would personally want to read, let like-minded people find it somehow. In the immortal line of one of my favorite movies,

What I’ll write about going forward

At the moment, I have a strong desire to write only two kinds of content: Guides and Everything Else. Currently, I have no specific frequency of posting in mind. My focus is now simply to enjoy writing. The rest will take care of itself.

Guides is largely inspired by 3 main sources. The actual guides (examples here and here) I greatly enjoy on Julian.com, the highly useful how-to tutorials on DigitalOcean (examples here and here) I employ in my work, and the term evergreen content in marketing guides on creating remarkable content.

Hopefully, I get better at writing eventually. At least, that’s the plan. And when that happens, I’ll come back here, adjust my goals, and go again. That’s one of the few things in life I truly enjoy — getting better at something.

So what’s in it for you?

I do hope you find at least one small nugget of useful knowledge here. Literally hours before I wrote this, I took a GrabTaxi and the driver shared with me a story of how much value he got out of an expensive (his words, not mine) 2-day Anthony Robbins seminar. I like it when he said, “As long as I got one useful nugget, it pays for itself. And it did!”

That’s an attitude I subscribe myself. If that describes you as well, then that’s makes the two of us the same kind of people. Since I intend to write only what I would read going forward, chances are good you would enjoy it too.

For the time being, you can visit the admittedly inferior stuff I have written so far at /blog before my new direction takes its full effects. You can also subscribe anytime for email updates below at the TinyLetter widget to get notified when I have new posts. No, I won’t spam you. Hell, I even have a privacy policy page covering that.

If on the other hand, you’re not a big believer in the value of knowledge and the idea that sometimes all you need is one good nugget of value, I sincerely thank you for reading thus far. I wish you all the best in your life. Even for a free (as in $$) blog such as this, it’s not really completely free. You gave me your time and attention, and I want you to know that I treasure that very much. Writing is hard. So, every view that shows up in my Google analytics dashboard matters to me. Thank you.